PREDICTIVE MODELING OF COMPLEX
FERROICS
Prof. Inna Ponomareva
Department of Physics, University
of South Florida
Complex ferroics such as ferroelectrics, ferroelastics, magnetoelectrics,
antiferroelectrics, and others are associated with rich physics and a variety
of technological applications. In the recent years such
materials attracted even more attention, thanks to the discoveries of
ferroelectricity at the nanoscale, magnetoelectric coupling in multiferroics
and giant caloric effects in some ferroics. Interestingly,
theoretical and computational research played an important, and sometimes
even leading, role in the recent progress in fundamental understanding of such
novel phenomena associated with complex ferroics. I will highlight some of our
most recent advances in the area of predictive modeling of such materials. In
particular, I will briefly review some of our recent methodological developments
and then focus on the computational discoveries of giant electrocaloric,
piezocaloric and multicaloric effects in ferroelectrics. I will also
present some of our recent findings on the unusual dynamics associated with
ferroelectric nanostructures and its potential applications for THz sensing.
Inna Ponomareva received M.S.
Degree from Volgograd State University, Russia in 2001, and the Ph.D. degree in
physics from Institute of Biochemical Physics of Russian Academy of Sciences in
2004. In 2004 she joined University of Arkansas as a postdoctoral fellow. She
joined the department of Physics at the University of South Florida in 2009 as
an assistant professor. She is a NSF CAREER awardee. Her research is funded by
the U.S. Department of Energy, National Science Foundation and the Army
Research Office of the Department of Defense. She has co-authored over 50
journal publications.
